The Smallest Faith

 It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. (Romans 9:16)

Let us make crystal clear at the beginning of the year that all we will get from God this year, as believers in Jesus, is mercy. Whatever pleasures or pains come our way will all be mercy. 

This is why Christ came into the world: “in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:9). We were born again “according to his great mercy” (1 Peter 1:3). We pray daily “that we may receive mercy” (Hebrews 4:16); and we are now “waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (Jude 1:21). If any Christian proves trustworthy, it is “by the Lord’s mercy [he] is trustworthy” (1 Corinthians 7:25). 

In Luke 17:5–6, the apostles plead with the Lord, “Increase our faith!” And Jesus says, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” In other words, the issue in our Christian life and ministry is not the strength or quantity of our faith, because that is not what uproots trees. God does. Therefore, the smallest faith that truly connects us with Christ will engage enough of his power for all you need.

But what about the times that you successfully obey the Lord? Does your obedience move you out of the category of supplicant of mercy? Jesus gives the answer in the following verses of Luke 17:7–10.

“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”

Therefore, I conclude, the fullest obedience and the smallest faith obtain the same thing from God: mercy. A mere mustard seed of faith taps into the mercy of God’s tree-moving power. And flawless obedience leaves us utterly dependent on mercy.

The point is this: Whatever the timing or form of God’s mercy, we never rise above the status of beneficiaries of mercy. We are always utterly dependent on what we do not deserve. 

Therefore let us humble ourselves and rejoice and “glorify God for his mercy!”

Eternity by Dax

 

DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SATURDAY JULY 08, 2023.

SUBJECT : DELIGHT YOURSELF IN THE LORD!

Memory verse: “Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 58 vs 14.)

READ: Psalms 37 vs 4 - 5:

37:4: Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

37:5: Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.

INTIMATION:

To delight in the Lord means to experience great pleasure and joy in His presence. This happens only when you know Him well. Thus, to delight in the Lord,you must know Him better than normal. The knowledge of God’s great love for us, that love that drove Him to give His only begotten Son as a propitiation for our sins, will indeed make us delight in Him. The Bible tells us to delight in the Lord and commit everything we have, and we do to Him. 

He created us and has put in place everything we require to live for Him according to His predetermined purposes. You can only know and have access to His limitless provisions when you delight in Him—strive to know Him and His ways better. Remember He said we should do this first—seek to know Him and His purposes for you, and all other things you need, including your desires, will be added to you without struggle. (See Matthew 6 vs 31 - 33.)

Steep your life in God’s reality of living through the wisdom and revelation of the knowledge of Him, never worrying about missing out. Then you will find that all your everyday human concerns will be met. Before all else, strive to know God’s way of doing and being right. It’s by God’s grace that we exist. We never entered into any agreements to be created by Him. It’s all His doing, and for His purposes. Therefore, if He has done all by Himself, and for His purposes, it’s obvious that to live and do rightly—living according to His preordained purposes—we must know Him and His ways thoroughly. It’s our quest and thirst to know Him and His ways that commits Him into revealing Himself to us. 

Therefore, delight yourself in the Lord, put Him first in all you do—let Him take the driving seat in your life. Resolve to set aside time each day to read and think about God’s Word, reminding yourself of it day and night, and God will be your constant companion, ensuring your success in carrying out His purposes. You may not succeed by the world’s standards, but you will be a success in God’s eyes, and His opinion is most important. 

The Lord gave this insight to Joshua, when He said to him, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in It day and night, that you may observe do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1 vs 8 - 9.)

God Himself taught Joshua the principle and strategy of ensuring a prosperous living, gaining good success, and having the pleasure of God’s companionship at all times. God said that to ensure the aforestated, Joshua must put Him first:  (1) Constantly reading and studying the Book of the Law—God’s Word, (2) ensuring his obedience to God’s law—doing according to all that is written in it, (3) always being strong and courageous; not being afraid nor dismayed.

Prayer: Abba Father, endue me with the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of You, that the eyes of my understanding being enlightened that I know the hope of Your calling, and the riches of the glory of Your inheritance in those that believe, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Saving Faith Loves Forgiveness

 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Saving faith is not merely believing that you are forgiven. Saving faith looks at the horror of sin, and then looks at the holiness of God, and apprehends spiritually that God’s forgiveness is unspeakably glorious, beautiful. We don’t just receive it; we admire it. We are satisfied with our new friendship with such a great, forgiving God.

Faith in God’s forgiveness does not merely mean a persuasion that I am off the hook. It means savoring the truth that a forgiving God is the most precious reality in the universe. Saving faith cherishes being forgiven by God, and from there rises to cherishing the God who forgives — and all that he is for us in Jesus. This experience has a tremendous effect on our becoming forgiving people. 

The great act of purchasing our forgiveness is past — the cross of Christ. By this backward look, we learn of the grace in which we will ever stand (Romans 5:2). We learn that we are now, and always will be, loved and accepted. We learn that the living God is a forgiving God. 

But the great act of experiencing our forgiveness goes on forever into the future. Our joyful fellowship with the great God who forgives lasts forever. Therefore, freedom for forgiveness, flowing from this all-satisfying fellowship with the forgiving God, lasts as long as we do. 

I have learned that it is possible to go on holding a grudge if your faith simply means you have looked back to the cross and concluded that you are off the hook. That’s why I have been forced to go deeper into what true faith is — not just a relief that I’m off the hook, but also a profound satisfaction with all that God is for me in Jesus. This faith looks back not merely to discover that we are off the hook, but also to see and savor the kind of God who offers us a future of endless reconciled tomorrows in fellowship with him. Satisfied fellowship with such a forgiving God is crucial for our being forgiving people.

GOD IS AT WORK IN YOU TO PLEASE HIM!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

FRIDAY JULY 07, 2023.

SUBJECT: GOD IS AT WORK IN YOU TO PLEASE HIM!

Memory verse: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”  (Philippians 2 vs 13.)

READ: Hebrews 13 vs 20 - 21:

13:20: Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,

13:21: make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

INTIMATION: 

To please God is to do His will; to walk in accordance with His precepts. It’s on this pivot that all pertains to life and godliness revolves. Jesus clearly expressed this fact when He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all other things will be added to you” (Matthew 6 vs 33). Every kingdom has a king, and the words of the king is law in the kingdom, and must be obeyed for a favorable and peaceful habitation of the kingdom.

God has not left us alone in our struggles to do His will—to obey His laws. He wants to come alongside us and be within us to help, hence His gift of the Holy Spirit—our Helper. God gives us the desire and the power to do what pleases Him. As a believer, you are not left to your own resources to cope with problems. God created you for His specific purposes that are predetermined by Him, even before the foundation of the world. Consequently, only Him can work out His plan and purpose in you. 

In Ephesians 1 vs 11, the Scripture says, “In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will.” God is sovereign and in control of all things. He works all things in us according the counsel of His will; ‘His counsel stands, and He does His pleasure’ (Isaiah 46 vs 10). God’s purposes for the believers cannot be thwarted, no matter how hard Satan tries, or what he brings our way.

Godhead—the Trinity, in union with one another, is at work in the world, and in every believer. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit never work independently of the other. The will of the Father is accomplished by the Son with the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. Thus, anyone who makes a sincere commitment to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior is secure in God’s promises, even the promise of everlasting life with Him. 

God’s work for us began when Christ died on the cross in our place. His work in us began when we first believed. Now, the Holy Spirit—our Helper—lives in us, enabling us to be more like Christ every day, helping us accomplish the will of God for us. This is the Christian growth and maturity that began when we accepted Jesus, and continues until Christ returns to perfect us and take us home to the Father.

Sometimes, by human assessment, you feel as though you aren’t making progress in your spiritual life, especially when sometimes you fall into sin. But be of good cheer, it is a gradual process that will only come to perfection when Christ returns to take us to the place He has prepared for us in His Father’s house where there are many mansions. 

All that is required of the believer is to believe Him and keep His commandments. The same commandments He has sent an Helper—the Holy Spirit to help us in our weaknesses.  God works in us to make us the kind of people that would please Him, and He equips us to do the kind of work that would please Him. Ours is to yield to the total control of the Spirit that His fruit will be fully manifested in us—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In the real sense of it, He does all things. What a benevolent Father!

Now, look at this Scripture, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1 vs 6.) Be confident that when God starts a project, He completes it! God has given us the Holy Spirit to help us grow in grace until He has completed His work in our lives. Never let your shortcomings, and your feeling of incompleteness, or distress becloud you of God’s promise and provision.

Prayer: Abba Father, I surrender my total being to you. Work Your work in me that to do Your Will at all times will be my way of living, and that I may be perfected by Jesus Christ at His coming, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed. Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

When Another Christian Hurts You

 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24) 

What is the basis of our not holding grudges against Christian brothers and sisters who repent? 

Our moral indignation because of a terrible offense done against us does not evaporate just because the offender is a Christian. In fact, we may feel even more betrayed. And a simple, “I’m sorry” will often seem utterly disproportionate to the painfulness and ugliness of the offense. 

But in this case we are dealing with fellow Christians and the promise of God’s wrath against our offender does not apply, because there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “God has not destined [Christians] for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). It looks like they are going to get away with it!

Where shall we turn to assure ourselves that justice will be done — that Christianity is not a mockery of the seriousness of sin? 

The answer is that we look to the cross of Christ. All the wrongs that have been done against us by genuine believers were avenged in the death of Jesus. This is implied in the simple but staggering fact that all the sins of all God’s people were laid on Jesus. “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6; 1 Peter 2:24).

The suffering of Christ was the real punishment and recompense of God on every hurt you have ever received from a fellow Christian. Therefore, Christianity does not make light of sin. It does not add insult to our injury. 

On the contrary, it takes the sins against us so seriously that, to make them right, God gave his own Son to suffer more than we could ever make anyone suffer for what they have done to us. If we go on holding a grudge against a fellow believer, we are saying in effect that the cross of Christ was not a sufficient recompense for the sins of God’s people. This is an insult to Christ and his cross you do not want to give.

How Christ Conquered Bitterness

 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. (1 Peter 2:23)

No one was more grievously sinned against than Jesus. Every ounce of animosity against him was completely undeserved. 

No one has ever lived who was more worthy of honor than Jesus; and no one has been dishonored more. 

If anyone had a right to get angry and be bitter and vengeful, it was Jesus. How did he control himself when scoundrels, whose very existence he sustained, spit in his face? First Peter 2:23 gives the answer: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.”

What this verse means is that Jesus had faith in the future grace of God’s righteous judgment. He did not need to avenge himself for all the indignities he suffered, because he entrusted his cause to God. He left vengeance in God’s hands and prayed for his enemies: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). 

Peter gives us this glimpse into Jesus’s faith so that we would learn how to live this way ourselves. He said, “You have been called [to endure harsh treatment patiently] . . . because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

If Christ conquered bitterness and vengeance by faith in what God, the good Judge, had promised to do, how much more should we, since we have far less right to murmur for being mistreated than he did?